YEARNING TO KNOW THE DIVINE

You know, everyone really wants to know the Divine, to know the love that is deep within them. But barriers come that are due to the wounds in the mind, due to the impressions left from past experiences in life and due to the five bondage's of the human condition that are innate to an incarnate body.

Each and every person is a living, vital, aware consciousness, part of one unitary whole. The divine consciousness that exists in all beings is your Soul and your Source. That is one with all that is. That Self of your little self abides always. But when you enter a human body, the five bondage's come into play, as well as the reactions that you have to past experiences (Samskaras). When you enter a physical form and you are living, vital awareness, your conscious sense of self awakens in a body. You become so immersed in that physical form that you have settled into that you feel, “I am this body.” Suddenly you are a separate individual, a unique form separate from all other forms.

You become an individual. Your sense of I-feeling comes to exist, this Asmita., out of this sense of individuality. Out of the identity with the body and the body-mind comes a feeling of smallness and separation. From that feeling of smallness and separation comes a need to acquire, to have, a need to have food, shelter, well-being for your body, a need to have attachments and loved ones because you are now separate, a need to have all the things that will make your body and your mind fulfilled and your heart and spirit calmed.

Of course, that means you must avoid all of the conditions and situations that will diminish your physical and mental well-being. You don’t want to be ill. You don’t want to get into difficult circumstances. You don’t want to be impoverished. You don’t want to need food or shelter. You want all of your needs taken care of and so you have aversion and a need to avoid circumstances and situations that would bring harm to your physical and mental being. You also have a need to acquire and to attach yourself to circumstances and situations that make you happy, bring you physical well-being and mental well-being. Thus, you have attachment and you have aversion.

Of all attachments and all aversions, the greatest is the attachment to staying alive and the aversion to death. These are all due to a fundamental bondage and that is the bondage of ignorance. These are called in Sanskrit the kleshas. The bondage of ignorance is the bondage of taking the unreal to be real, taking that which ultimately brings pain to be pleasure, misunderstanding the nature of reality.

From this ignorance comes identity of self with the body and the mind and thus with limited individual form. Thus the need to acquire and the need to fear and to have aversion arises. And of course, the inability to accept death, for that is an end to your physical and mental bodies, but it is not an end to you. For you are the spirit, this immortal Self, this conscious, aware being. When you point to yourself and you say, “I” this “Me” is that conscious being, is it not? But you assume you are the body. You assume you are the mind. You become so immersed in the vehicle that you can no longer find yourself. Thus arises suffering.

The cause of suffering is illusion, maya, illusion based in ignorance, taking the unreal to be the real. The suffering is real. When you lose someone you love and you cry, it is a very deep and painful real suffering. When you are ill and you have pain and sorrow and struggle, it is a real suffering. When you are in poverty and your basic needs are not met, it is a real suffering.

But the cause that makes suffering exist is the identity with the body-mind, with the ego, with the I-feeling rather than identity with the larger Self, the one eternal being. When you identify with eternal being then you know, though forms come and go in the ever-changing creative process of existence, the nature of the eternal Self is one. That which you love most deeply cannot be lost. It cannot be diminished. It is forever and you are forever. You, not as a body and mind, individual identity, but your being, your Soul, your Self is forever one. For that substance out of which all is formed, that substantive essence, that Purusha, that consciousness, is one. The love that is unconditional, whole, has no duality, is one. It is the substantive nature of all that is.

Like the dream in the dreamer’s mind, so all the forms of this world exist in the mind of the Divine. All of creation turns in the consciousness of eternal being. As with the dreamer, though the characters appear in the dream to have different substantive existence and go through various experiences, they are all simply in the mind of the dreamer. This creation exists in the mind of God and your existence is never separate, for your substance is that eternal Self, that divinity. Your essence is like the drop of water held in the glass of your ego. When you pour it out into the ocean of the Divine, it cannot be found as separate from the sea. It becomes one with the sea.

You are one with that eternal love, with that deepest truth, with that Source of all existence. You are not separate. You will never be separate. Only you get caught in the dream, the illusion of form and duality. And when you get caught in that illusion, then there is fear and there is need. There is duality. There is I and Thou. But when the veil of ignorance is removed from the eyes, you see that there is only the one eternal Self. There is only the Beloved. There is only your deepest heart’s desire fulfilled. The love that has no second, that cannot be spoken in words, that is the yearning of your heart, is your own nature. It is the nature of all that is.

When you awaken from the dream, you see only the Beloved everywhere. There is only the Divine appearing to be the countless forms of the Creation. Awaken from the dream, the illusion, the ignorance and all the other problems fade away. The bondage's dissolve and you know you are ever in the arms of the Beloved. You are ever whole. You are ever complete. You are one. There is no other. There is nothing but the Divine.

In the play of duality, there is light and shadow but even in the darkness, the Divine exists, ignorant of its own nature. Still, its nature, its substance is the unconditional love of the Supreme. Remember this. All right? All right.